Home for Horny Monsters - Book 4

Getting A Head

Beth scowled at the water. She was sitting on the shore of the Labyrinth's circular river, watching it rush past. Her knees were pulled against her chest beneath a powder blue skirt, and she tossed another rock into the cold water. It disappeared with a small splash, and Asterion lifted his head from his position next to her to see what had happened.

"Is everything okay?" he asked.

She rolled her eyes, but didn't look at the minotaur. "Yeah, it's fine."

In truth, it wasn't. Ever since her return from the faerie realm, she had been playing the episode with the queen on repeat in her head. All she could think about was the giddiness that had overcome her, the rush of excitement that flooded her whole body and caused her to so quickly turn her back on Mike and the house. At that particular moment, she would have given her very soul to stay with the fae, and it bothered her to know that she had been out of control.

She hated being out of control.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Asterion asked, his voice a low rumble.

She had come down to the Labyrinth to drop Quetzalli off so that Ratu could examine the enchantment on the dragon and try to break it. Beth's plan had been to take her mind off of the faerie queen incident by dallying with the minotaur. However, before they could even get started, all she could think of was the queen's mocking tone as the nobility pawed at her body. It had been like a cold shower on her libido, and she had ended up just cuddling with the minotaur by the river.

While Asterion was kind, he was a terrible conversationalist. She had explained what had happened, and he had spent several minutes in thought over it with absolutely nothing to add.

"Yeah, I'm good." She sighed. Mike refused to talk about it with her. He kept telling her it wasn't her fault, and when she had tried to explain her discomfort at being unable to control herself, he had just nodded and explained it would get better with time. It had been a couple of days since the incident, and now Mike was back with the centaurs over his head wound. Apparently his wound had gotten infected, so she was stuck with bringing the dragon down to the Labyrinth.

Quetzalli.

There was yet another problem with no clear answer. For whatever reason, Quetzalli was now Beth's eternal shadow, and while the dragon meant no harm, it was very much like babysitting an adult child capable of shorting out anything she touched.

Beth's phone had been the first victim. A curious peek, a loud zap, and the screen went dark forever. Her computer was spared, but Mike's was not, and while Tink was ordering what she needed to replace the electrical system, Quetzalli had pointed at the screen in wonder and a series of electrical arcs jumped from her fingers to the laptop, turning it into a paperweight.

After emitting a string of curses that sounded like an entire rap album in fast forward, Tink had dropped everything to make Quetzalli a horn cap. The shiny metal horn the dragon now wore twisted into place and had the appearance of a unicorn's horn, and she shocked everyone and everything far less frequently now. By then, it was bedtime, and she had crawled onto Beth's mattress and fallen asleep right away, leaving Beth to sleep on the couch in the living room.

That was when she discovered that Jenny and the fairies liked to stay up late and play tag in the dark.

In the morning, she made sure to make a nice, big pot of coffee before Quetzalli could short that out, too. When the dragon had failed to show for breakfast, Beth went upstairs to discover that Quetzalli had opened all of her drawers and tried on most of her clothes. Even worse, her clothes now stuck to each other, which meant that she would need to run them through the laundry again with copious amounts of fabric softener.